LogFAQs > #932866958

Welcome to yet another Gauntlet Crew ranking project! About three years ago, towards the end of 2016, I hosted the first installment in the Gauntlet Crew Ranks Movie Musicals trilogy. Out of the thirty films ranked in that project, Little Shop of Horrors came out on top, becoming (I believe) the first project winner that was unanimously a part of every ranker's top ten.

It is now 2020, and the time has come to rank more movie musicals! This list is comprised of movies that didn't make the cut on the first list for one reason or another, but still have some cultural relevance, whether they were well-received by audiences or critics, were awards darlings in their day, have become cult classics, or really any other reason. This time around, as you might expect from the topic title, there are more entries from the "Golden Age of Movie Musicals," generally considered to comprise the period from the '40s and '50s, when movie musicals were among the most popular films in Hollywood and the rest of the Western world, through the genre's eventual decline due to skyrocketing budgets and middling critical reviews in the mid '60s.

The definition of "movie musical" has been slightly expanded this time through; I'm still limiting the list to theatrical releases (however limited, in the case of films like Repo! The Genetic Opera), but featuring a few more movies that might be considered more of a "movie about music" rather than "musicals" by purists, in which the performances are all a diegetic part of the story (such as 42nd Street, The Blues Brothers, and the various versions of A Star Is Born). There are also a couple of sequels and remakes for good measure, and even a foreign film to keep things interesting.

Our seven stalwart rankers this time are:

Genny
Inviso
Johnbobb
JONA
Karo
KBM
Scarlet

And, of course, here is the list of 35 films that were ranked for this list:

42nd Street (1933)
On the Town (1949)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Kiss Me Kate (1953)
A Star is Born (1954)
Guys and Dolls (1955)
Jailhouse Rock (1957)
South Pacific (1958)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (or: Les parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964)
Help! (1965)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966)
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)
Oliver! (1968)
1776 (1972)
Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
A Star is Born (1976)
The Wiz (1978)
All That Jazz (1979)
Hair (1979)
Fame (1980)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Yentl (1983)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Rent (2005)
Dreamgirls (2006)
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
The Last Five Years (2014)
Into the Woods (2014)
La La Land (2016)
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
A Star is Born (2018)